arming heine in a different way? should we be involved? those are things you have to deal with congress , so bringing them in could be a little bit something else. president biden is with some southeast asian leaders. here s one of the big practical takeaways. yes, we have guam, japan, a base now in australia. i was there for the opening up and when president obama went there, and you realize how important that was. strategically, what allies would you like to see the united states have in southeast asia that could help protect taiwan? i m going to add one who is a strong ally, and i think we can depend on, that is of course singapore, as was indicated, japan is very strong, and south korea is very strong. if you really look around the circuit, we re missing one slot, and it s the philippine islands, and don t forget we had wonderful bases there. we fought hard there in world war ii. we had subic a, clark air force base. that, in many way was the centerpiece of our western pacific
in other words, this will be maritime, air on air. it s going to be cyber going in the background, which is certainly part of the conflict, so it s going to be a very technological play. and then secondly, chuck, it s leadership it s going to matter here, that is a hard one to assess. just as we blew it on afghanistan, taking the afghans in the fight and blew it on ukraine, thinking the ukrainians were going to fold, we ve got to get this one right, so i think a subtext for me that i am looking at is what is the fighting spirit and will of the taiwanese? that is going to be the determinant here. if i were to say that the biggest question i have in my head through this whole exercise is and the hardest part of this exercise is putting ourselves into the
we want to focus on a last- ditch effort to deter to send the strongest possible message to beijing privately and publicly that there will be severe cost if they actually go through with this. s china has seen our reaction to ukraine, and we want to make sure that we re surprising them with how we react here here hit the americans as hard as they can in eastern ihl, keep them out of the fight in taiwan. we start forcefully with the missile bombardment in taiwan. all right, stacy, high-level here. what just happened with and move one? china invaded taiwan. and began attacking taiwan s outlying island and the mainland, then followed it with a large air and missile strike on taiwan and on u.s. bases in japan and on u.s. bases in guam
and the northern marianne is, and we re responding to that with the united states following up with bomber attacks on u.s. ships, chinese ships and ports, and there was an air battle over taiwan where american aircraft flying from the philippines came in and engaged in combat with chinese aircraft that were trying to bomb taiwan. after move one, can you assess which team is winning? i think it is a stalemate right now. china has strategically blotted by pulling japan in, and the united states is still well- positioned to defend, but china also has a lot of its assets left and has a lot of power that it can apply. joining me now onset is my colleague, nbc news correspondent carol lee. the man who helped us put together this, this partnership
welcome back. the white house continues its focus on providing ukraine would support it needs in its war against russia. president biden will turn its attention to another region today with his own security concerns it is southeast asia. resident will host southeast asian leaders at the white house at the u.s. seeks to assure our allies in that region that it is committed to their security amid a looming threat from china. the timing of this meeting happens to come as our latest episode of meet the press reports takes you somewhere never seen on camera, full wargame exercise that imagines how america would react to a chinese attempt at essentially invading and taking taiwan. here is a sneak peak. as you can see on the map, it s a very large concentration of chinese people liberation army forces and potential ports of demarcation for an invasion.